Over the Cracks
by Lovebites and Popcorn
Summary: So how did we get here and how does this end, I wonder? /AxelRoxas one-shot. Gift fic for Leigh./


**Over the Cracks**

_So how did we get here and how does this end, I wonder?__** /Axel & Roxas one-shot. Gift fic./**_

* * *

_**Author's note:**__ There had been a time not too long ago when I first started writing fiction in the Kingdom Hearts category. One of the main reasons I decided to get into the fandom was because of the wonderfully diverse cast (of course, it's true that Axel and Roxas stuck out a lot more to me compared to the others). There was also a time not too long ago when I'd get comments from readers that were short and sweet; very pleasant, but not quite so beneficial apart from an ego-boost. And then, a fantastic young woman came along. The first thing she ever read out of my repertoire was MP&FR, I believe. Hear me now. If there ever was a single person out of a million so capable of giving the best, most constructive reviews and commentary, it would be her. She has been a delightful reader and it's been a pleasure writing for her. So…_

_**This is for Leigh (xWhisperWolfx).**_

* * *

_Let him have the key of thy heart,  
who hath the lock of his own.  
_(Sir Thomas Browne)

—

There were many things to be said about the one christened Number VIII in this foreboding, desolate little hellhole that was The Castle That Never Was. For one, he was never unhappy here – fact, none of the others were, suffice to say, melancholic or suicidal so far, so maybe it said something about the unearthly, almost-exotic atmosphere. But on the contrary, neither could you, at a cursory glance, pronounce the Flurry of Dancing Flames to be over the moon about the non-life he lived. Oh, yes, the lone individual had many, many names of course, most of which were only dabbled with or given to him by his dry league of peers, and those were never quite so flattering.

There was something not quite right about Axel. Something idiosyncratic. Not that he was the type to care to admit it. But there was something written in deep gold and purple in his grass-green eyes that would make you wonder just what the deal was with this guy.

Whatever the case, Axel liked to think of himself as a lone wolf. Contrary to what people believed or even deduced from his misleading behaviour, Number VIII was definitely not a people person. Neither was he an immature bastard bent on pulling uproarious pranks on every member of the Organization. It was a fact that any gullible bystander would get completely wrong on their first grand assumption. Taking a leaf out of one of his fellow associate's books, you would fast learn that to judge a person by appearances would lead to either your sticky end or said person's brutal demise.

Axel was no child.

He _despised_ talking to the superiors, whether it be idle chit-chat or otherwise. Not that he would tell them to their faces upfront, of course, because he was smart like that and kept his mouth shut when he needed to. He wasn't the kind of guy who would go looking for unnecessary trouble. Still, the man hated taking orders. But he didn't have much of a choice in that matter so long as he wanted to continue walking this world; without a limp or a spear in the leg for that matter. Nevertheless, the redhead had made it his number one purpose in his entire non-existence to ensure that the higher-ups knew just how he felt about the regulations of the Organization. He made it his _ambition_ to push everyone's buttons until he had them stretched to their limits.

Quintessentially, he liked to feel as though he had some kind of standing—some kind of debauched _status_—in this forsaken Palace of Nobodies. He had the capacity to work his magic and use his charm to wrap every single person he encountered around his little finger and, unashamedly, he didn't really give a damn that his frolics would guarantee him a death certificate—with an extended expiration date, of course.

Axel was, ideally, his own man when it all boiled down to it. Nobody or otherwise, people like him were dangerous. Either that, or a danger to themselves.

So, when an unprecedented complication came out from nowhere and started to impede on his personal social order, he believed he could handle it, no problem. The obstructing hurdle was pretty damn short, after all. So in a way, somewhere between sneering in the face of this new snag and living his non-life like a queen, he wasn't counting on the grim reaper tearing up his immortal death certificate and crafting him a new one from scratch… this time _without_ an extended expiration date.

He definitely wasn't counting on this particular snag being just as wickedly selfish and unscrupulous as he.

* * *

Things started out fine. Not bad. Pretty normal. It had been one of those days when the world was _just right_ and everything was in its perfect place. Nothing screwed with nobody's plans. The higher-ups were silent; content. The lowly subordinates were happy where they were. No loud disputes. No aggressive eye-scratching. No mishaps to be candy-coated and swept under the carpet.

All was well.

It was night. At least, according to everyone's reckoning at the castle, it was. Time had no established meaning in such an uninviting place like this and you couldn't tell night from day either way. It seemed that the sky was inexorably a boundless, infinite black hole. So, based on loose principle, it was night. Possibly early evening. It really didn't matter. There were many who didn't care.

The Flurry of Dancing Flames, black cloak and leather gloves and nice shiny boots and all, was flouncing his way down a semi-lit hallway of the silent monochrome abode that housed the fabled Organization. The moon was bright. It was _always_ bright. He paused only to shoot Number VI a decidedly insolent grin when the Schemer glided past. Zexion had looked back at him briefly in reasonable suspicion with one of those thin eyebrows quirked upward whilst the redhead flagrantly glanced at the three tomes cradled in his arms, all ganked from the castle's vast library. Oh, that was undeniably _odd_. Since when had Zexion started reading music manuscripts?

Wasn't that Demyx's thing?

Axel hadn't pondered this for very long before he ran straight into one of the castle's demon residents a few corridors down. This would be a classic example of the kind of botched luck Number VIII suffered from time to time.

Nine times out of ten, the disreputable blue-haired terrorist would bypass the redhead without a word; maybe add a malcontent grunt to the mix. But when he had _that_ look on his face, chances of such barefaced disregard happening were pretty slim. Oh, yes. The Luna Diviner had his on-the-brink-of-murdering-your-family-if-only-you-_had_-one look about him.

This, no matter which way you looked at it, did not bode well for the redhead in the slightest.

"Number _Eight_," Saïx barked coldly, eyes narrowing into slits. Oh, the reptilian bastard. His sharp teeth looked sharper than usual today. Joy. "Weren't you supposed to be abiding by The Superior's instructions of habitually monitoring Number Thirteen and ensuring his appropriate assimilation into our inimitable environment?"

Axel massaged his temples. Yes. Yes, how utterly _predictable_. Trust this man-bitch to know anything and _everything_ relating to his beloved _Superior_ and the crap assignments that said Superior delivered to his—_minions_ (for lack of a better word)—on a daily basis. If the redhead could lay a claim on any emotion right now, he'd be going for total abhorrence. Towards I and VII, of course. And maybe even indirectly towards Number XIII as well. Was _everyone_ in the citadel an asshole apart from _him_?

"_Number Eight! _Do you have a reasonable response to my straightforward query?"

The redhead loosened a small noise of exasperation, deciding that Saïx had possibly been spending way too much time with Xemnas. The Superior's rambling dialogue seemed to have rubbed off on his loyal underling. "Yeah, yeah, I heard you. But your ridiculously big words have given me a really bad migraine. Can I call in sick and get water boy to do it instead?"

"That will _not_ be acceptable, Number Eight. Nor will this show of audacity be tolerated."

Axel stared at the blue-haired Nobody for a moment, silently wondering if there was something big and highly agitating stuck up the man's butt, then he finally let out a tragic sigh that bordered on extreme misery. "Fine. Jeez. Whatever you say, _Saïx_. You're only one rank up the ladder from where I stand, y'know?" he muttered in annoyance, turning away from the Luna Diviner. "And cut down on your extensive vocabulary, will you?" the redhead threw over his shoulder as he started down the hallway once more and trudged his way to The Key of Destiny's room. "Fucking bootlicker," he growled aloud to himself as soon as he had turned at least three corners and entered a different passageway.

The redhead had been hoping to avoid everyone today and just abandon his duties for more appealing activities (playing with fire and hurling chakrams against Demyx's door came to mind). Besides, that new kid, scrawny and petulant as he may be, was a damn right pain in his skinny ass. Metaphorically speaking.

He came to Roxas' chamber door, knocked on it once, twice. Kicked it several times too, for good measure. If the blasted pygmy was asleep, all the better to wake him up in the most ungracious manner possible.

Regrettably, there were no indignant squawks of protest from inside (not that Roxas squawked—the kid literally _snarled_), much to Axel's disappointment. Instead, he received no response whatsoever. All was still and silent from within.

The redhead figured it was time to take drastic measures.

He jiggled the doorknob. It was, unfortunately for the room's occupant, unlocked. _Bingo_. The trespassing redhead let himself in without any further hesitation. It was one of his ungainly traits: a deliberate lack of respect for others and their personal space. Not that Axel was really bothered about what other people thought about his conduct, or misconduct for that matter.

There was this one rule within the castle which preceded all others whereby the Nobodies were strictly banned from entering someone else's room via dark portals. Something about Number XII bitching and whining about wanting her goddamn privacy. There was to be no gender discrimination in this Organization, it seemed. But lately, with the way Axel had been more or less adamant in disregarding the doors themselves, Xemnas might as well have that rule abolished.

As the redhead stood by the doorway looking in, one thing registered in his mind: the little brat wasn't even in his room.

"What… the hell…" he huffed, a tad annoyed. Well. The damned kid picked this as a swell time to go wandering around within the bowels of the castle, _unaccompanied,_ like he owned the place or some shit. Smug little bugger. The redhead mentally snorted and hoped that somehow the stupid pygmy would get himself lost, or at least get molested by Pinky's flesh-eating vegetables. "Fine, hide and seek, huh? I _could_ play that with you. But I'd rather spend my time doing more important things. Like sleeping. Fuck Xemnas and his obnoxious puppy. This blows."

Axel was about to turn on his heel and walk straight back out when the other door from across the room slid open slowly. It was, needless to say, the stupid pygmy stepping out of the steaming bathroom with a thick, blue towel wrapped slackly around his waist, a hand in his sopping wet hair mussing it up crazily with dynamic enthusiasm, flinging warm droplets of water all over the floor.

Later on, Axel would come to a realisation that this was the most normal thing he'd ever see the boy do.

As the redhead continued to watch in something like vague amusement, Roxas suddenly looked up and spotted the intruder at his doorway immediately from the pale light that filtered into his semi-shady chamber from the hallway outside. Axel's prominent silhouette was framed within that rectangle of pallid radiance. Instantly, a dark frown plastered itself on his young, boyish face. A habitual expression for the kid if there ever was one.

"What are you doing here?" the blond questioned flatly. And those words seemed cold and sceptical coming from his mouth.

Axel sighed. Apparently there was no running away from foul-tempered people on this fine night. He weighed what little options he had. He could jest, he could retaliate with just as much scorn and insolence, or he could play it cool and act as though this visit was not at all his idea in the first place. The first would probably just push the kid towards antipathy. The second would do it even better.

Axel went with the final alternative, which was the option he'd always exploit when stuck in dubious situations.

"I am, as a typical slave under The Almighty Superior might say, under strict orders to—_observe_—you," the redhead replied simply, like it was the most obvious thing ever.

Roxas didn't miss a beat. "And how come I was _never_ told you were supposed to be _observing_ me?"

If it was one thing Axel learnt that day, it was that Roxas had a very quick mind and an equally quick ability to say things that got straight to the point. No wayward shenanigans, no time-consuming crap or equally bastardizing mindfuckery. The kid was as blunt as a wooden club.

The redhead snorted a little mockingly. "You should have been. Actually, I was supposed to be doing this observing thing for a few days now. Maybe even weeks. Sorry, wasn't counting. Forgive my inability to show any interest in you. The Superior reckons, in the name of Kingdom Hearts and all things glorious, that I should keep tabs on you and your everyday routines. Never really bothered."

The kid looked back icily into Axel's green, black-rimmed eyes through the darkness. "Well, good," he said, voice hard. "Don't start now. Get the hell out of my room."

Axel's expression brightened considerably, undeterred by the hole-boring gaze that Roxas was gracing him. Here was his one big chance to neglect his duties (at least for a little while). And it wouldn't technically be his fault either!

"Serious?" he probed further, eyeballing the blond as if he weren't half-naked and wet and shrouded in darkness.

"Serious," Roxas said dryly, ignoring the rivulets of water dripping from his hair into his eyes. "Unless you actually want to stay here and observe me as I put my clothes on."

Axel blinked. And then he laughed almost drolly like what the kid had said was hilariously funny. "The _hell_ would I wanna do that? You are perhaps the _ugliest_ little—"

"Finish that sentence and you'll wish you never had."

Axel grinned. "Ooh. Tough guy, huh? I'd like to see you summon your keyblades and try to gut me while holding up that towel of yours. Hmm… how does the new kid play?" the redhead hummed, as though talking to himself. But not really. Because that would be stupid. "Would he sacrifice his dignity over retribution? I would really like to find out."

He knew he shouldn't be provoking the boy. He'd heard stories from the others of how vicious Number XIII—'_that infernal new kid_'—could be. And Axel didn't want to be on the bad side of someone who could potentially be a mission partner (really, he could tell that Xemnuts had been itching to put him with the antagonising little brat since day one and God only knew why; not that Axel believed there was some big guy up there in the clouds watching and judging him by some code of ethics and morality). But, as previously demonstrated, Axel was the kind of guy who loved to see how far he could go to test someone's patience.

"Aw, come on. What do you have that I don't? 'Sides, you're only a little boy. With little boy parts."

Roxas gripped at his towel a little tighter, fingers digging into the cloth. Other than that, the kid's expression didn't break. Pale and stony. Like flawless marble.

"Call me a _little boy_ again and I'll make sure the walls are decorated with your entrails."

Fact: The Key of Destiny frequently resorted to unreserved violence when things weren't going his way. Or when he was just cranky.

Axel's smile faltered a little. Just a little. The kid was a fucking bitch with no sense of humour whatsoever.

"Right. I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Now, you sure you don't want me to stay?"

"Well, unless you're not particularly fond of your flaming head."

Axel wasn't one who took lightly to indirect insults when it came to his hair. But he figured he could afford to play it up a little. Button-pushing sometimes escalated into button-mashing. Challenges were the redhead's forte.

"Why, Roxas, aren't you positively _charming! _If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were _jealous_ of my well-sculpted head. Looks like it's on fire, eh? Gonna chop it off and mount it on your wall, huh key boy?"

Roxas took that moment to growl and in one slick movement, a keyblade sang to life in one of his unnaturally steady hands. The black, dark-ish one. Axel never knew what the kid called those oversized household items of his. They both started with 'O'. But that was really all he really bothered to remember. Keys were keys. Fuck names and shit.

He _did_ know for sure that there were things the keyblade could do to a person that the redhead didn't want to stick around to find out firsthand.

He beamed widely nevertheless, not one to show weakness or frailty.

"Okay. And _that_ would be my cue to hightail it outta here."

The redhead turned smoothly and started out the door, pausing long enough only to say, "You know what, kiddo? I never thought I'd come clean with you, but damn, you're a real mean little boy," before running out into the corridor beyond.

Oblivion whizzed through the air and out of the Key of Destiny's open door, crashing into the opposite wall in the hallway, only missing Axel by a mere inch. The clamour had been awful.

At this point, Axel figured he'd have to hand it to the kid's Somebody—whoever the hell he was—when he had the chance. Because Number XIII turned out to be a real fucking gem.

* * *

Axel loved games. He adored them as much as any Nobody could actually adore something, which, on his part, was saying something.

The redhead loved games.

So long as he was the one pulling all the strings.

He liked it better when he was the one playing both sides in a game of chess. Ebony and ivory. Two heads on a coin, fifty-two Aces in a deck, Snake Eyes every single shot. Nothing to squander but his time. Time was perhaps his biggest concern. But, being the self-satisfied individual he was, he knew he had plenty of that.

Axel had plenty of time. And he was pretty damn smug about that fact.

So it was perhaps forty-eight hours following the ridiculous incident in the kid's room that he found himself with his nose buried deep in a leather-bound hardback volume, seated in one of those uncomfortable high-backed chairs at one of the long tables within the library. He had, damn the fates, nearly broken his big toe upon entering when the Melodious freak of nature smashed into him. The aggravating sitar-hugging infant-man had been exiting the library without even looking for incoming traffic. What a total half-wit. Axel had held everything against the inept klutz. The redhead figured the fool must've had a tail for feet in his alternate life. Walking in a straight line could not be that damn hard.

He thumbed through the pages of the seemingly-prehistoric book in his hands.

"… _OH! that my young life were a lasting dream!  
My spirit not awakening, till the beam  
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.  
Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,  
_'_Twere better than the cold reality  
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,  
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,  
A chaos of deep passion, from his birth…"_

The redhead made a noise of displeasure at the back of his throat. Poe needed to stop talking about hearts and dreams and _chaos of deep passion, from his birth_, whatever the hell that even meant.

He tossed the ancient book to one side and selected another from the haphazard pile beside him—random books that had looked appealing to the eye collected from the various shelves and plunked down on the table. _The Silence of the Lambs_. Yes, much better. Something that had no goddamn poetry or eulogies or odes to joy.

Reading wasn't so much a favourite pastime of Axel's as it was a means to unwind and escape from reality after a particularly tiresome mission. It also provided him hours upon hours of entertainment when either Zexion or Larxene were around and trying to concentrate on their scientific reports/gothic romance novels respectively.

It was perhaps not at all odd that hardly anyone else entered the library. The Superior was way too busy worshiping his beloved Kingdom Hearts to do something so stupid as read. Xigbar had claimed awhile ago that he was totally over books and needed to get a life—Axel had no doubts drug trafficking was involved somewhere. Xaldin, oh, who the hell knew what that creep was up to anyways? Vexen visited the library on occasion, but spent most of his non-life cooped up in his laboratory. He got uglier by the day. Rockface was… usually somewhere else. Blue would be off scaring children or polishing the boss' boots with his tongue. The sitarist would only visit the library for music manuscripts, otherwise he'd be in his bedroom trying to dance with his clones or blow his own eardrums out with his singing. Luxord preferred perfecting his lurid card tricks. Pinky spent his time growing random shit all over the castle; reading in a library just wasn't his thing—something about books being made out of _paper_. Fucking tree-hugger.

Roxas had yet to make a stopover.

But Axel believed that to be a good thing. The chamber of books would forever be his hidey-hole from the disgusting creatures that were housed in this anti-fairytale castle.

Of course, just as Axel had that thought stuck well and good in his mind for two minutes, Roxas walked in, silent as a whisper, and sat down not more than two chairs away from Axel on the opposite end of the table.

This, in retrospect, should not have been a problem. But, Axel had made the big regretful mistake of looking up in unhidden interest and catching the boy's eye.

Roxas had this blank look on his face. Totally plastered all over. No, he didn't look vulnerable or lost in any way. Just… blank. Like a sheet of paper with nothing written on it. His dirty blond hair was as messy as ever and his sapphire-tinted eyes seemed clouded over with something incomprehensible.

He was empty-handed. And he was staring at Axel. Just staring. Almost as though waiting long-sufferingly for the redhead to acknowledge him so he could ask a question.

Oh. Great.

The redhead arched a stunted eyebrow. He hoped to the ugly moon in the sky that the kid wasn't going to try some freaky shit on him.

"May I help you?" he intoned, voice bordering on callousness. "You know, I'm a busy man. Make it snappy."

Expression still pretty much blank, the kid seemed to think for a moment in silence. Then, he dropped his blue-eyed gaze and stood not a second later, subsequently stalking off in some random direction in a cloud of ice, leaving Axel alone once more.

The redhead, needless to say, was baffled for a few moments as to why the hell he'd just been treated like a talking piece of furniture.

Like, seriously.

What the fuck was _that_ supposed to even _mean_?

And Axel, unfortunately, didn't realise how many of those game-manipulating strings of his were about to be severed.

* * *

Sometime a week later, Axel would come to comprehend just how interesting the blond-haired pygmy was. Of course, by then, the word 'interesting' had lost its effect and didn't quite describe the kid any longer. Axel figured that this newfound revelation of his had come about somewhere during his Superior-assigned task to monitor said kid and note his every move and display of behavioural conduct. Well, it wasn't as though the two had gotten along very well. Roxas still blatantly ignored the redhead whenever he could and Axel would be damned if he ever admitted anything past 'remote awareness' towards the Key of Destiny.

Either way, for one, Axel had figured out what the weirdo's favourite food was.

Two words: _Peanut butter._

Then again, it wasn't a well-kept secret on the kid's part only because it was pretty obvious he found it nigh irresistible. The whole castle knew this from the fucked up facial expressions and orgasmic noises he'd make whenever he licked a glob of that sticky brown stuff off the end of a spoon during breakfast.

It wasn't so much fascinating to Axel as it was incredibly annoying. And disturbing. Always gave him the chills for some unknown reason.

"You gotta stop doin' that, kid," Axel had told him once.

Only once.

Because Roxas hadn't exactly given a damn. And Axel wasn't the type to waste his breath on useless tactics of persuasion only to learn that it wouldn't make a difference in the first place.

Axel had discovered key boy's favourite colours too. By accident. And he had meticulously recorded all this pointless information down in a mildly-comprehensive report for Xemnas. Because the Superior was a freak like that and needed everything penned down on paper, in ink, with timestamps and signatures to boot. Even for stupid-ass 'observation' tasks such as this.

"Why black and white, though?" he asked Roxas one day out of the blue when they were passing each other in an empty hallway.

And Roxas seemed to somehow understand the ridiculously cryptic question like he'd known Axel had been wanting to ask for ages now.

"Because they're not really colours, I suppose," Roxas answered vaguely, shrugging in the most offhanded fashion.

Axel didn't bother writing that down for Xemnas to read. It was inside knowledge on Roxas that he figured he'd keep to himself. Because _something_ told Axel that Roxas' Somebody loved bright, vibrant colours. And Roxas was just the total and complete opposite.

Utter claptrap. But whatever. For the record, it made absolute sense in his head.

Black and white weren't proper colours. They were more like tonal shades . Of course, you could get specific and distinguish between carbon black and onyx, or ivory white and pale snow. It was a fact that you often linked black with chaos and evil and you related white with peace and purity.

But you associated both colours with death.

* * *

A day later, the redhead couldn't help but make a jibe. Much like the first time, they were passing each other by in an empty hallway.

"No seriously, Roxas. _Vanilla_?"

This time, Roxas had no idea what _that_ question had meant.

But Axel had been waiting for an answer. And the kid didn't feel like asking for a clarification, so he just pushed past the man and continued on his way like the redhead hadn't said anything. To say that Axel was amused by this was an understatement.

Vanilla. Tsk.

* * *

Number XIII's first official assignment had been an off-world mission to Twilight Town. The kid was, as luck would have it, paired with Axel, just like the redhead knew he would be. Golden Eyes was way too easy to read—he loved tormenting the redhead and putting him with the most difficult people to deal with; Demyx, Vexen, occasionally Larxene… and Hell hath no fury like that bitch scorned. If Axel didn't know any better, he'd say Xemnas had a fucked up sense of humour.

Anyways, the mission with Roxas itself was nothing too taxing. The word 'boring' would've made the cut. There wasn't very much you could do at Twilight Town, especially when it was just a quick scouting assignment. Scouting what? Axel had no clue. He figured all they had to do was make a few rounds, reconnoitring and patrolling the area, like he always did on every other damn scouting mission.

To say that the trip to Twilight Town turned out pleasant would be a big fat lie.

Their compatibility rate, Axel had learnt during that one almost-dull mission, was something close to zero, if not completely non-existent. Which, okay, didn't come as a surprise. But it wasn't that they didn't get along. Granted, they'd probably be able to if they _tried_. And that was the main issue. The whole 'trying' thing seemed to be below them in some way.

And somehow, in some miraculous way, they'd managed not to get under each other's skin too badly. Something about getting used to each other's presence all those past few weeks whereby Axel had been 'observing' Roxas, because somewhere along the way, the kid had noticeably seemed to stop glaring like a damn fluorescent lamp whenever Axel came to call and Axel had definitely come to loosen up around Roxas enough not to taunt or crack lame, spiteful jokes.

In any case, the redhead didn't come back from the mission empty-handed. Figuratively speaking of course, because he _had_ come back empty-handed, literally.

He'd learnt some trivial things about Roxas. 'Trivial' here having the meaning of 'useless information that held virtually no value whatsoever and would best be left forgotten'.

For one, he realised he was dead wrong when he thought peanut butter was the kid's favourite food. Although what was so special about fucking blue blocks of sea-salt ice cream was well beyond him.

It _did_ make the kid uncannily happy though. He could tell, from the relaxed gait in his step and the absent-minded half-smile on his face. The way to a man's heart was through his stomach. Or whatever that saying was. Axel didn't care. It would never apply to them either way. Not in this lifetime.

"How can you even _stand_ that crap?" he had to ask the kid, just to find out if he could dismantle and _then_ decipher those crazy thoughts in that tiny brain of his.

And Roxas, blue-eyes wide, had stared at Axel like he was insane. And then he'd plucked the ice cream bar out of his mouth, held it out, and asked entirely without reservation, "Would you like to try some to see what you're missing?"

And Axel, lacking grace, had refused on the spot.

Ice cream was against his very elemental nature. It would be a cold day in Hell before the Flurry of Dancing Flames gave it a try. Oh yes, a very cold day in Hell indeed.

Roxas had shrugged and continued to slurp at the blue slab like Axel had never interrupted.

_Kids_, the redhead scoffed somewhere at the back of his mind. _Fucking loons._

"It's your loss, you know?" Roxas had muttered a few short moments later.

_Well. You're a fucking loony little monster._

* * *

First impressions were always pretty bad; at least where Axel was concerned. Sometimes they got worse. Sometimes they got better. Sometimes they just remained the same. But Axel wasn't going so far as to give the kid much credit for making it off his imaginary hit list in such a short amount of time since getting to know him. The redhead had taken the liberty, after perhaps five—maybe six—days straight of mere contemplation alone after the Twilight Town scouting mission to scratch Roxas' name off the bottom. There were about eleven names on his hit list as of now. And there would come a time when the redhead would manage to cross off at least half of them through annihilation.

But that's a different story.

The reason behind his unusually charitable decision came about through an incident. To be more precise: a minor dispute. No, oddly enough, Axel wasn't part of it. Neither did he actually witness it, much to his disappointment. But from what he'd learnt of the fight, he could afford to put the kid way above the other Nobodies in terms of tact and social etiquette and, dare he say it, _class_.

So here's how it started.

Number X, that overconfident, big-headed, egotistical prick, had approached him rather unexpectedly one day and started _talking_ to him.

Axel, needless to say, wasn't very receptive when this happened. After all, it was rare of the gambler to single people out unless he wanted a willing victim he could trounce at poker or blackjack. Luxord hardly ever _talked_ to a person. He _gloated_.

"Yes?" the redhead had bit out, tone decidedly unfriendly.

"Well, good day to you too, Tango."

Axel remembered rolling his eyes somewhere around then. Sure he was the Flurry of _Dancing_ Flames. But no one had to go skewer his alias and abuse it like an insensitive jerk.

"What do you want, O Lord of the Cards?"

"Nothing, Foxtrot. Nothing _you _can provide, anyhow. Just here to tell you about the ruckus I heard earlier on down my end. It is apparent that your protégé has crossed swords with the Nymph. Literally. There was a loud disagreement, on Twelve's part anyways. She's a demanding woman, that Larxene. It probably didn't help her that Thirteen was being particularly thorny."

Axel had winced at this.

"Is the kid still alive?" he found he needed to ask.

"Something like that."

The perpetual smirk on Luxord's face had told the redhead nothing, except that his goatee looked pretty damn unattractive on his mug.

So Axel decided to find out on his own.

He had bypassed Larxene's room and peered into Roxas'. The kid was in there, mindlessly polishing off his keyblades, like there hadn't been a quandary in the first place.

Axel, in a mood for mockery, had chosen to leave the kid alone for awhile and backtrack towards the Savage Nymph's room.

Larxene had snarled and thrown her bedside lamp at his unsuspecting head as soon as he slammed her door open in a flourish. Of course, although her aim was nothing short of amazing (the woman had a dartboard on her wall with a good number of kunai stuck at its bullseye), Axel prided himself for his speed and agility and well-practiced knack for dodging flying objects. He had ducked, causing the lamp in question to smash into little pieces out in the corridor, and then continued into the room unperturbed.

"Heard there was a—what was the word he used—a _ruckus, _or something to that effect. Had a dispute with the kid, did you?"

"He nearly carved my face off!" Larxene had more or less shrieked in response and, with a great deal of flamboyance, had gestured wildly at the little nick against her cheek, courtesy of one of those super-massive keys.

It was nothing short of a miracle that Roxas could have landed such a blow on the bitch's face. Just what had that fight been about anyway? Of course, it was one question that Axel never got answered. He figured he sort of didn't want to know in the first place.

Anyway, Larxene had gone on and on about how her 'attractive-looking visage' had been totally marred.

Axel had just laughed and told her she looked fifty times better that way. Of course, right after, he had to make a run for it and slam the door behind him in haste. Around maybe a second or two later, he heard about seven of her nasty little knives hit the door and something like an explosion of sizzling electricity from the other side of the barrier.

So much for pleasantries.

* * *

It was maybe a minute later that the redhead had made a quick second trip to Roxas' room.

"So, had your first heated discussion with one of us, huh?" he questioned when Roxas had finally become aware of the man's presence after a while.

"Well, _she_ started it," the kid had muttered with a shrug.

Oh.

It was around then that Axel had made up his mind about putting a line through Roxas' name in his make-believe list of people he wanted to stomp on.

"Alright, alright. I don't doubt that."

And as he turned to leave the boy in peace, he had said, "You know, you never fail to make an impression, Roxas."

* * *

They'd been on at least a dozen other missions together since then. Their latest had been a disaster. And it didn't even happen off-world; it practically happened just out in the castle's damn backyard. Of course by then they'd already more or less figured out that Roxas' keyblades were a shining beacon-magnet of doom for the Heartless. Pretty cool, and _so_ much more exciting when you had five billion of them on your tail. But after the first five minutes of enduring the stupid swarm, Axel thought it was a pretty shitty situation they were in.

It was perhaps the first time Axel had exhibited any kind of alarm when facing a cluster of Heartless. There were just so fucking many of them.

But then the kid had revealed his undisclosed talent at last. And hey, he wasn't half bad at taking care of the horde. Intense slashing here, mind-blowing acrobatics there, a hell lot of jumping and twirling and hacking. He'd started a goddamn fucking disco party as well, summoning blinding pillars of light and completely upstaging the glitz and glamour of the Flurry of Dancing Flame's own stakes of fire.

The bastard.

Axel never liked it when he was overshadowed in a fight.

Of course, out of competition, the redhead had to go and do something needlessly stupid, essentially nearly beheading Roxas with one of his chakrams through a miscalculated aim. And if that wasn't bad, he had accidentally managed to rip Roxas' cloak and slash a neat little bloody line across the kid's knee.

And _then_ they had kind of realised that they were way out of their league a few moments later. So Axel had justifiably decided to take drastic measures, like he always loved to do.

He said three words: "Ah. Fuck this," and then grabbed Roxas by the arm and portalled back to the safety of the castle's interior without a backward glance.

* * *

Xemnas hadn't been particularly happy about their shoddy performance during that one mission. Not happy at all.

But Axel had taken the liberty of modifying the account and had taken all the blame for himself. After all, it was undeniable that he did sort of indirectly try to render his partner a cripple. He should never have gotten in the kid's way.

Later on, in the privacy of one of those empty hallways, he took it upon himself to apologise to Roxas.

"Sorry 'bout your leg, kid."

He actually sounded _and_ felt sincere, which was something of an uncommon phenomenon on the redhead's part.

Roxas, strangely enough, didn't really show any concern about the matter.

"Mmms'okay. Y'know – accident."

Axel almost didn't think he could accept his forgiveness.

* * *

It was one of those silent, soporific, almost nigh-unsettling nights—a little chilly and a tad desolate on the side, as though a haunting winter had befallen the castle. Not that the world they were in actually experienced such a season, at least not with a postcard-picture snowfall following a sudden drop in temperature.

There was a cold, sharp rapping of knuckles against his chamber door. It sounded cold and sharp only because it was so deathly quiet all around. Maybe the devil himself had come to pay a call—something about certificates maybe—because honestly, the world seemed to have just ceased spinning on its axis and it was as though everyone had just stopped breathing and dropped dead. Whatever the case, someone seeking him out at this hour could not possibly be a good sign.

Axel emitted a long, discontented groan and rolled over in his bed, jamming his face into his pillow. What the hell was _with_ the universe being against him these couple of days? He'd just come back from a reconnaissance mission with that water pansy a few hours ago. Said water pansy hadn't been the most helpful of partners to work with, apart from when they had to make a quick getaway as soon as that ugly baby elephant with the big ears tried to attack them. Why couldn't people just leave him the fuck alone right now? Didn't they know that a redhead's got to have his beauty sleep? How else would he look so fine and attractive? Jeez. Even if it _was_ the devil out there, Axel couldn't bring himself to care less.

"Go 'way. 'M tryin' t'sleep."

He hoped that his tone would make whoever the hell it was out there think twice before attempting to open his door. If there was anything the redhead despised, it was someone trying to hinder his moments of righteous convalescence and recuperation.

A couple more knocks resounded a little less sharply, and a quiet voice followed.

"Ax. It's me."

Oh, thought Axel. And somewhere at the back of his mind, a thought surfaced. Could you get any more _vague_ than that?

The man lifted his head for a few moments, frankly a little perplexed. His hair was mussed and he had to blow a few crimson strands out of his face. His eyes tried to focus on something—anything—in the semi-darkness. They could hardly stay open. Giving up, he groaned again, cursed silently and sat up with sluggish exertion, rubbing the sleep from his eyes to clear his blurry vision. Now, suffice to say (for it should have been obvious by now), if it were any other person at his door, Axel wouldn't have bothered responding and would have slept on through. Especially if it had been say Saïx, or Vexen, or God forbid, that annoying jackass with the pink scythe.

"Rox… what do you want?" he garbled, words mangling into total incoherence.

"Can I come in?"

It was logical that Axel chose that precise moment to roll his eyes. "You don't answer a question with another question," the redhead mumbled, disgruntled. _Habits die hard,_ he wanted to tell the kid, _fucking kill it right now_. But something stopped him. He figured what he needed in that instant was a straightforward, mostly-uncomplicated resolution to this matter. "…Whatever. Just… come in. And please, whatever you do, shut the door behind you."

The pale light from the corridor outside nearly blinded him when the door creaked open, eliciting a low hiss from the redhead. The boy stepped in noiselessly and pushed the door shut without delay. Well at least the kid had the decency to listen to simple instructions.

And then, in a few short seconds, Axel's visitor was standing not two feet away from the edge of his bed, gaze intently fixed upon the redhead.

Axel was slightly weirded out by the way Roxas was looking at him in silence. He couldn't quite read his expression however—only knew that those blue diamond eyes were boring holes into his own clean-cut emeralds. And if it was one thing he'd learnt from his observations of the boy, it was that Roxas would never really speak his mind or give you the answer you were looking for until you bothered to ask him first. So, Axel figured he'd make a start and enquire as to why the kid was looking for him when everyone else was deep in coma-like slumber.

"Er… do you want something?"

Roxas didn't miss a beat. He never did.

"Can I stay the night?"

Axel kind of just stared at the boy for a moment.

"Stay the night," the redhead repeated, enunciating the words slowly.

Sometimes it was better to make sure the person you were dealing with understood how preposterous they sounded by doing a one-eighty with their own mind-boggling requests.

"Yes."

Axel wondered if there was something amiss in this scenario—not that the entire situation itself wasn't weird.

He ran an unsteady hand through his hair once, feeling the knots and kinks in his deflated spikes catch against his fingers. Roxas' staring eyes were still on him, he could feel them piercing through his flesh excruciatingly. Something definitely felt strange. Axel, for just a fleeting instant, believed that Roxas looked… well, almost out-of-place here. Not just _here_ in his room, but _here_ in the castle itself. It was like he didn't belong in this place.

All the same, the man didn't question his visitor any further. Just sighed submissively and moved to one side of his bed, making some room for the boy.

"C'mere, you," he murmured, patting the empty spot beside him in resignation.

Roxas was almost hesitant at first, like he wanted to back out at any minute. Then, he moved forward and slowly climbed into the bed, settling himself down next to the redhead.

Axel felt some of the warmth from his body leave him. Roxas was cold.

He grunted and moved a little closer to the boy without actually touching him.

And it was only whilst the redhead had been drifting back off to sleep that he heard it—almost believed he'd imagined it.

"… Thank you."

It wasn't so much a tentative whisper as it was an expression of gratitude.

* * *

It would be later that Axel would find out that Roxas had been unbearably lonely ever since his initiation into the Organization.

* * *

The sky was bright and orange up here.

Axel figured today would be the day a mini snowstorm swept the heart of Hell and turned it into one big-ass refrigerator.

"I told you, didn't I?" Roxas was saying in a voice that was _almost_ (but not quite) buoyant. "You were missing something pretty damn awesome."

Axel didn't really feel like killing the kid's smile, so he shrugged and focused on trying not to get a brain freeze as he bit off a large chuck of sea-salt ice cream from the end of his stick in hostility—he'd take it out on the blue bastard instead (of course, he figured he was just being immature about it and surrendered almost immediately to the inanimate frigid bitch).

They were more or less silent as they sat up on the tower and looked over the town below.

It was their second visit to Twilight Town together on yet another layabout scouting mission. Roxas had this brilliant idea to go up to the clock tower and stay there for the whole duration of the mission. After all, there was probably no better place to survey the vicinity than the highest point available. Plus, the kid had reasoned eating ice cream up there all day didn't construe as a bad thing. Axel, in the murky depths of his mind, begged to differ. He could do with_out_ the ice cream part of the plan, thank you very much.

"Axel."

"Hmm?"

It was one of those moments where Roxas would suddenly decide to be conversational, and it kind of didn't happen very often, from what Axel had experienced so far.

"Have you ever thought about… how we die?"

Questions like that had once used to cross the redhead's mind on numerous occasion, particularly when moments of hypersensitivity and meditation overcame him. Now, he knew better.

"Nah. We don't die. We just… disappear."

Now, Roxas seemed to be the meditative one.

Axel continued shortly. "Our other halves are the ones who die. We're just… empty shells, you could say."

The blond seated beside him snorted quietly, then went back to polishing off his icy indulgence like no words had been exchanged between them. There was an aura of thoughtfulness radiating from him now, Axel could feel it.

The warm sky was littered with feathery pink-purple cotton-candy clouds and occasional blue-black streaks of airborne crows. It made for a rather pretty backdrop that enveloped the town. But the redhead didn't really notice. He couldn't see past the blue-eyed boy seated to his left. Roxas seemed placid, almost tranquil, and his hair shimmered golden in the sun.

All of a sudden, there was something oddly appealing about the younger Nobody. There was some previously-overlooked quality in him that the redhead seemed to now become aware of.

"…I wonder if he's out there, alone, like me."

Axel glanced away to one side, reverie broken at the sound of Roxas' low, dismal voice.

He wanted very much to reply, 'but you're not alone'. Instead, he just shrugged. "Probably not."

A crow cawed forlornly from somewhere overhead.

"You know, I really hate this feeling."

Axel opened his mouth to ask the boy 'what feeling?', because he wanted—maybe even _needed_—to know. But what came out instead was almost an automatic response. "Nobodies can't hate. Or feel."

Roxas was silent as he tossed his popsicle stick over the precipice and watched it nose-dive towards the ground below.

"Yeah," he murmured finally, half to himself, half into his lap, expression indecipherable. His fingers were curled into fists. "Yeah. You're right."

Axel didn't know what to make of that.

* * *

The second time Roxas found Axel in the dark of the night, looking for company and a place to sleep, the redhead didn't even say a word, just looked away, muttered something inarticulate and moved to one side to make a small space for the boy to lay down beside him.

His own words of wisdom came back to him in that instant.

_Habits die hard_.

He didn't think it would be fair if this one did. Not to Roxas. And maybe not to him either.

He found it extremely difficult to fall asleep after that. Through the all-consuming darkness, the redhead could only watch Roxas' own sleeping form—calm and peaceful and so out of the ordinary. A frown had found its way to the man's face as disorganized, confused thoughts filtered through his mind.

And just one of them stuck with him as he finally dozed off.

_So how did we get here and how does this end, I wonder?_

* * *

When Axel had first met Roxas, he hadn't thought much of him. He saw the kid as just another tool of the trade for the Superior to use and abuse; just another means to make sure his precious Kingdom Hearts came to completion.

Thus, it was sufficient to say that things had taken a dramatic turn somewhere along the way. An enormously dramatic turn. Whether it had been a one for the better or one for the worse, Axel couldn't be certain, neither would he care to disclose the answer to that if he knew. But he reckoned he would never have an answer until he passed on.

Either way, he knew it held some kind of significance, because he found himself holding Roxas high above everyone else, even himself.

As of today, he couldn't, for the life of him, remember what his first words to the boy had been.

But he vowed he would remember his last.

* * *

Several monotonous and highly lacklustre nights down the road, the redhead found himself lazing in his own room, stretched out on his bed, reading _The Purple Prose_ by his bedside lamp. Roxas was lying on the floor a few feet away, aimlessly flicking through his own paperback in easy silence. It was something like an unspoken agreement between them both on this matter—they would have each other as company, because no one else in the castle, dead or alive or non-existent, _understood_. And they never would. Because really, there was no way they could possibly even try to.

Axel knew for a fact that the boy was nothing like him. They weren't so much complete opposites, in fact, in many ways they were quite the same. But they were almost poles apart when it came down to individuality and preference. Really, it was more a matter of volatile confidence versus obscure vagueness in their bizarre Garden of Eden. Of course, in retrospect, Axel would come to see that Roxas' impassive fronts were just a pretence for what was hidden.

Well. The night started out fine, if not a little quiet.

And then—maybe it was the trick of the light or something completely unrelated—Axel started to notice the frequency in which Roxas was glancing up from his book at him with those too-large ocean-blue eyes of his. Just short, fleeting looks. The boy was obviously trying for tactful inconspicuousness, the redhead supposed.

But then it just got more and more noticeable until there was just no way he could be aiming for subtlety.

It got down to a point whereby Roxas was just full-out staring at the man. So Axel, brows creased in consternation, decided to snap his book shut abruptly and look down at the boy. His curiosity had gotten the better of him. Which usually wasn't a good thing because whenever his curiosity peaked, things ended quite disastrously. The fact that this was _Roxas_ he was dealing with didn't help.

"Hey," he started, because he didn't quite know what to say. "Um… you okay?"

And it was in that one instant of acknowledgement that Axel finally noticed the full expression on the kid's face that night.

For the first time, Roxas' usual impassive mask seemed to have more or less dissolved into nothingness. And underneath, there was a small tormented child, lost and wondering and almost fractured on the surface with thin spider-like cracks running all over the place. Axel was almost startled by the change. There was irrefutably something more complicated beneath the boy's usual detached exterior.

The boy in question held Axel's gaze for a long moment, then pushed his novel aside and stood slowly on the spot. His sapphire eyes, strangely enough, were blazing in the soft shadows surrounding them.

"Axel." The way Roxas purposefully murmured his name sounded just a little eerie. "Could you… could you let me try something?"

The man blinked a couple of times, a tad confused. But he recovered quickly enough and gave a small nod.

"Sure, kid."

He didn't exactly know what Roxas had in mind, but somewhere along the way, he had kind of given up saying no to the boy. However, almost a few seconds later, Axel wondered to himself if he would come to regret agreeing to whatever was impending, though it wasn't often that the redhead had regrets anyway.

Besides, those eyes were so damn _blue_.

"Hug me."

There was a long pause on Axel's part following Roxas' words.

Alright then. Maybe he _would_ end up regretting giving his consent to this; whatever this game was.

"Hug you," the redhead reiterated slowly in a tone that suggested high scepticism. It was a failing of his to always echo words that made no reasonable sense to him.

"Yes."

"I thought _you_ wanted to try something."

"I do."

Axel sighed. So the kid wanted to try something, but he was going to let _him_ do all the work? Now where was the fairness in that? Well, either way, Axel figured he wasn't going to question it any further because, after all, he _had_ already said yes. So, he dragged himself off his bed and stepped towards Roxas, pulling him into something like a cursory embrace.

The boy felt unbearably tiny wrapped in his arms, and he was still; unmoving.

When he finally decided to let go, Roxas looked pensive and deep in thought for a moment.

"Nothing," he muttered softly at last. He looked back up at Axel, eyes still uncannily bright. "Do it again."

"What?"

"Just do it."

Axel, in a state of acute perplexity now, could do nothing but comply, gathering Roxas in his arms for a second time.

He didn't let go until Roxas pushed away, sighed and shook his head, almost as though he were disappointed by the outcome, whatever that may have been.

Axel, as smart as he was, had no idea what the kid was trying to do. He wasn't even sure they were on the same wavelength right now.

So he did nothing and waited until Roxas opened his mouth again, which he eventually did.

"Kiss me."

And it was then that he finally, _finally_ figured it out. But he mentally berated himself for not seeing it sooner.

There were so many things a Nobody couldn't claim rights to. Feelings, emotions, a life, a heart, a place to belong, a reason to live, a reason to _be_. And it was only now that he finally realised how much Roxas had been trying to find out _why_. It was now that Roxas wanted to _feel_. He wanted to know what it was like.

"Axel, kiss me."

The redhead exhaled almost desolately and looked away. "Roxas… you won't get what you want. It doesn't work that way. It… will never work. Not for us."

But he knew Roxas was not one who took to discouragement.

"Just… kiss me. _Please_."

Something in that almost-desperate voice, so broken around the edges, had provoked Axel into motion. It was almost a spur of the moment thing when he looked back into those drowning eyes, leaned in and kissed Roxas on the mouth gently.

It was just a soft brush of the lips. However, he had hoped it would be enough to satisfy him—at least curb his curiosity.

As he pulled away awkwardly, Roxas was openly frowning.

Maybe, if Axel had a heart, it'd be in little pieces by now.

"Again. With… more… with more feeling."

Blue eyes seemed to consume and tear him down.

Axel didn't bother telling Roxas that it was impossible, what he'd requested. So he just did it again. Just like the boy wanted.

His arms encircled Roxas' undersized frame slowly and he leaned down once more to seal their lips in a kiss. A kiss that was a lot longer and undeniably a lot more sophisticated than the first.

_With more feeling._

And he tried. He really did. If he were to tell you anything, the redhead would acknowledge that he'd never had any prior experience with something like this in his entire non-life. Pretending to do something that he knew wouldn't be possible… It was painful. So painful.

And then, somewhere during the time they were connected, something shifted in the redhead's chest.

Something.

But then Roxas jerked away suddenly and stood, breathing hard.

Cursing softly, he walked out the door, leaving Axel alone in the room, feeling unmistakably dejected.

That was, if the redhead only _could_ feel that way.

And it was like a spell was broken. Some kind of magic was lost.

Axel's mind was nothing but blank. An austere abyss.

—

It was a few hours later, sometime past midnight maybe, that Axel took it upon himself to summon a portal that led him to Roxas' room. He could have used the door, but he didn't want to wake Roxas up. Not if he could help it, anyhow.

Roxas was on his bed, eyes closed in a comatose state of apparent siesta. Axel approached the boy and gingerly sat down by the boy's side, all the while looking at him in his near-vulnerable state—so different in the day when he would put up his manifestation of remote callousness.

He reached out and touched Roxas' face, stroked one of his ashen-white cheeks and pushed some of his hair out of his face.

"I'm sorry."

Axel started when Roxas murmured those two words with his eyes still closed. He almost thought Roxas was talking in his sleep, but from the boy's erratic breathing, it was now pretty obvious he'd been awake all the while.

The redhead's expression softened.

"I'm sorry too," he said, and then briefly wondered if they were apologising for the right reasons.

…Could they even _feel_ sorry?

Roxas made a noise and rolled over on his side so he was facing away from Axel, leaving an empty space beside him on the bed.

A wordless invitation, clear and unambiguous.

And Axel took it. Because denying it was out of the question.

The redhead kicked off his boots and gently climbed into the bed, laying himself down next to Roxas. He noticed when the blond had finally let out the breath he'd been holding in for the last thirty or forty seconds. And slowly, noiselessly, he draped an arm over the fragile body of the boy and pressed him close, burying his face in his pale-golden hair.

He didn't think he could let go when the time came.

For the rest of the night, Axel was filled with the delicate, intoxicating smell of Roxas' soft, blond spikes.

_Vanilla, _the back of his mind told him._ Vanilla-scented shampoo_.

For the rest of the night, both were silent and still.

For the rest of the night, neither actually slept.

* * *

The assignment at Castle Oblivion had quite possibly been the best and the worst time of Axel's non-life. Of course, maybe a couple of days prior to the task at hand, the Superior had brought this insipid-looking girl to The Castle That Never Was and had introduced her to everyone in rather sketchy tones. He had just about _given_ the seemingly-mute child to Marluxia for safekeeping; Axel had almost feared for her state of mind at that point, because he knew how Pinky had been endowed with the superlative gift of fucking with people's minds.

But he'd been more interested in other things. For one, during the couple of days that Naminé had resided in The Castle That Never Was, Roxas had seemed to be hell-bent on ignoring her very existence. This, to Axel, had been strange but noteworthy. Of course maybe somewhere down the road, the two would come to terms with the void between them—the redhead knew they had a lot more in common than they thought.

And then _Operation: Oblivion_ had been put in motion and Axel had been assigned to the other castle, along with some of the most dreadful bastards from their legion.

He didn't know what had gone on in that senile old head of the Superior when he'd sent Axel along with the other five of them to the second castle. Three of them had made up the upper bracket of the Organization. The redhead supposed he should have been flattered by the strange honour of being a part of the huge campaign.

But, with Number VIII, flattery got you everywhere and nowhere at the same time. On the one hand, it never worked, he could never feel flattered in the first place. It went against the rules in this big game of life—the one he never lived. On the other hand, he liked to pretend he could be bought by sweet words and sugar-coated expressions—he didn't mind if they were lies. And then of course, if they weren't lies, and they weren't exactly words of flattery, he'd twist them so they'd seem that way somehow.

* * *

Axel, after many months of anticipation, had finally met Roxas' Somebody face-to-face.

The legendary keybearer. In the flesh.

Their encounters had been brief, but entertaining, if not extremely grating on his nerves.

If the redhead were to be entirely honest, he'd confess that he hadn't been all that impressed by the twerp.

If anything, he'd only felt something akin to resentment towards him.

* * *

When Axel had returned from Oblivion alone, with IV, V, VI, XI and XII eradicated, and the half-princess gone, it wasn't a surprise that everyone had held their suspicions.

Axel couldn't blame them. Sure, he made it out that he had been the only loyal member of Organization XIII remaining and that he had to gain some of Pinky's trust before foiling his treasonous plans. But really, if he had had the chance, the redhead would've killed every single one of them anyway, no matter where their allegiances had lain. At least that would've given him the opportunity to gloat about the reasons why the little list in his head was getting shorter.

Of course, he'd had a hand at a couple of the misdeeds himself.

Zexion hadn't _technically_ been his fault. But the Chilly Academic, oh yes.

Now Vexen, he'd killed out of displeasure, and maybe even fear, not just because that idiot flower-brained moron had ordered him to. Vexen was doing some stupid, reckless things that Axel just could not let him go through with. No, apart from just being a blabbermouth in general, taking the keybearer through Twilight Town and letting him in on things that insinuated hints of his Other? The old man was just _asking_ for a damn chakram to the gut. Tsk, tsk. The redhead sure as hell wasn't willing to let Sora in on the secrets of his 'other side' just yet. At least, not if he could help it.

There were just some things that needed to remain unchanged; some memories needed to be untouched and… untainted.

He would keep both halves in the dark for as long as he could.

Sora had been pretty dense at Castle Oblivion. The kid was valiant and courageous, the redhead gave him that. But he had always been slow on the uptake most of the time, which suited Axel just fine.

It was too bad the redhead couldn't say the same for his Nobody.

* * *

Axel didn't quite realise how far Roxas was prepared to go to find out about his origin, his Somebody and the secret behind his tangible-but-really-quite-intangible keyblades… until it was too late. When the kid had come up to the redhead asking a whole heap of questions, Axel could only shrug them off and try not to bring too much attention to the subject; at least feign ignorance for the moment. As much as he hated keeping the truth from Roxas, he couldn't bring himself to face the alternative.

So, he would keep up with the sleeping dog act. He would lie.

Once upon a time, Axel wouldn't have cared in the slightest—maybe even laughed about it. Who _cared_ what Roxas did or thought, right? He was only the Superior's tool, after all.

Once upon a time, Axel had been a different man.

That seemed like a long time ago now. Yesterday's stolen memories seen through the eyes of someone else. He knew he'd changed. Something was different. Something had shifted somehow. Axel didn't think he could wrap his head around what that might be. He just took it at face value and chained himself down to… whatever it was.

He knew it was fragile. Like glass jewels.

He had turned himself into a willing prisoner of the unknown.

It was something he'd learnt on his own one day whilst contemplating the meaning behind their eccentric relationship; this peculiar ebb and flow of unease and apprehension somewhere within him that threatened to take hold whenever he thought about the kid coming into contact with his Other.

He knew he was troubled. And maybe a little selfish, but he didn't want to go too far by admitting it out loud. Besides, friends weren't supposed to be selfish, right?

Then again, the term 'friendship' didn't quite sound right in his head.

And Axel never found out what it was that they had. Because he never had enough time to figure it out.

* * *

So, like every story ever told, all beginnings had to have an ending.

Axel had known from the start that he'd had plenty of time. Death never came knocking if you were smart and didn't go looking for it.

Well, truth was, his time had fast been fading since the day he met the Key of Destiny.

And the countdown was almost over. There were just a few grains of sand left in the hourglass.

* * *

Days came and went vaporously, and almost nothing prepared him for what was to come. There were signs, of course. So many of them. But Axel had been willing to overlook them in whole and ignore them for what they were worth. Because of course, so far as he knew, they weren't worth acknowledging. And they definitely weren't worth appreciating. He knew they only brought the inevitable closer at hand.

Why did he have the keyblade? Why couldn't he live a proper life? Who was it who had taken away his ability to be whole? Why was the Organization keeping secrets from him? Why was _Axel_ keeping secrets from him?

So many questions. All of them signs of the self-destruction that was to come.

Whose self-destruction?

Well, the exodus had been obvious from the point of genesis.

So, something like a hundred days (maybe a little more—Axel hadn't been counting) since his initiation, Roxas approached the redhead to tell him that he'd finally made the choice to seek out his own answers so as to put his leadened mind at peace.

And Axel, for so long now, had been waiting for this moment to come.

—

They were seated in a secluded part of the empty library when it took place. One of their last proper conversations. One of their final heart-to-heart talks—if only.

"Curiosity killed the cat, Roxy. Not implying that you're a feline in any way. But still, curiosity might effectively kill you too."

Granted, the redhead knew quite well that he was trying to play the cool card with the blond. Which didn't really work. Not today.

"Oh? And would you care if I died looking for answers? Be honest with me, Axel."

"… You're pushing me, Roxas."

And Axel wasn't about to let Roxas know that he was shoving, not pushing. He didn't like where this was going, neither did he want to regard the wishy-washy way in which Roxas had been trying to come to terms with everything so far.

The boy in question seemed to deliberately ignore Axel's last statement. "No, I suppose you wouldn't care if I did," he went on. "And if the higher ups are as heartless as they've made themselves out to be, then I suppose they'd probably make you find me. And kill me."

Axel glared for a moment.

The one thought that went through his mind in that instant was probably along the lines of: _what the fuck is this crap, Roxas?_

"Roxas, shut up. Don't give me that bullshit. They won't make me find you and there will be no killing. Because you're not leaving. You're not gonna look for answers. You're gonna stay here. With me."

And Roxas looked up into Axel's eyes with his own gleaming dual sapphires. They were deep, vacant, hollow pools that sorely yearned to be filled.

His next few words were hushed, secretive. "There's nothing here for me. And you know it."

Axel pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes. He didn't want to accept the fact that the strings were finally severed completely. This was not game over. It couldn't be.

Not yet.

"Rox…"

_There's me, _he wanted to say. _I'm here. _

_You can have me._

"Mmm?" Roxas murmured softly, waiting.

And Axel swallowed. He looked up. There was blue-steeled resolve in those wide, icy eyes; so reserved and determined.

So instead, he just said, "…… You're… serious about leaving." And it wasn't a question, because it was a statement of inevitability.

Roxas smiled ruefully and reached out to touch Axel's face, tracing two fingers down one of his teardrop tattoos.

He felt cold.

"I'm really sorry, Axel. Really, I am."

_No. You're not. _

_You're not, Roxas. _

* * *

_To throw away  
__an honest friend is,  
__as it were, to throw  
__your life away.  
_(Sophocles ; Oedipus the King)

* * *

_**afterward.  
**_

_An extraordinary little blond boy sits there idly, all semi-grown up, somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. His legs dangle limply over the sharp edge of sandstone, paper-smooth to the touch. If he's not careful, he'll plummet to the bottom and face an untimely death. His lips twitch wryly. Oh, like there _ever_ will be a day when he'll die such a pathetic death. Secretly, he thinks that somehow he'll leave this world in a much more heroic fashion than that. One where people will remember him by. Or at least he likes to dream that to be the case._

_Dreams. He's been having plenty of those lately. Mostly confusing, black and white broken tales._

_Black and white. Black and white._

_The little boy shakes his head and the fleeting thoughts disappear in a cloud of sparkling red and gold fragments. He looks down at his fingers. There's a small popsicle in his right hand. Pale, pale blue stares back at him. Nothing like the sky. The sky is orange. It's always some kind of orange from up here, always, always—as if the entire canvas has been painted over and over with different shades of a dying bonfire with an old paintbrush. _

_The little boy sighs. He's alone. He's made it up here without company. He's momentarily glad of that. Today, he doesn't want the distraction of companionship. _

_Silly Hayner, odd Pence and pretty Olette. They don't need to know he's up here. Thinking to himself._

_Thinking, thinking._

_There is something not quite right here. The little boy _knows_ it. He's known it for quite awhile now. But. _

_He can't quite put his finger on it._

_Something's missing, that much he knows is true. But until the day comes when he finds the missing piece of the puzzle, the little boy won't stop thinking._

_No. The little boy won't._

—

_He stands abruptly, tosses his bar of half-eaten ice cream over the edge of the tower and watches as it plummets and disappears down below._

* * *

**Fade to black.**

**It all ends the same way.**

* * *

_**Author's note:**__ The end. _

_Hope you enjoyed it, Leigh. (And everyone else).  
_

_Regarding the fic, I was prepared to write something quite lengthy. But this was absurd. All the same, it was my attempt at something different. I looked at the __friendship__ aspect of the AkuRoku pairing instead and tried to keep out inklings of any romantic feelings they might have had. After all, Nobodies supposedly don't 'feel'. Even so, it's kind of hard to see them without some kind of strong attachment to each other, don't you think?_

_It's there. You don't see it. But something's definitely there._

_And thus, here ends my Axel character study. :)  
_


End file.
